Sharks That Pass In The Night: Using GIS to Investigate Competition in the Cretaceous Western Interior Seaway
Issue Date
2011-09-01Author
Myers, Corinne Emanuelle
Lieberman, Bruce S.
Publisher
The Royal Society
Type
Article
Article Version
Scholarly/refereed, author accepted manuscript
Metadata
Show full item recordAbstract
One way the effects of both ecology and environment on species can be observed in the fossil record is as changes in geographical distribution and range size. The prevalence of competitive interactions and species replacements in the fossil record has long been investigated and many evolutionary perspectives, including those of Darwin, have emphasized the importance of competitive interactions that ultimately lead one species to replace another. However, evidence for such phenomena in the fossil record is not always manifest. Here we use new quantitative analytical techniques based on Geographical Information Systems and PaleoGIS tectonic reconstructions to consider this issue in greater detail. The abundant, well-preserved fossil marine vertebrates of the Late Cretaceous Western Interior Seaway of North America provide the component data for this study. Statistical analysis of distributional and range size changes in taxa confirms earlier ideas that the relative frequency of competitive replacement in the fossil record is limited to non-existent. It appears that typically, environmental gradients played the primary role in determining species distributions, with competitive interactions playing a more minor role.
Description
This is the author's accepted manuscript, also available at http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rspb.2010.1617
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Citation
Lieberman, Bruce S. 2011. “Sharks that pass in the night: Using GIS to investigate competition in the Cretaceous Western Interior Seaway.” Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences 277:493-501. http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rspb.2010.1617
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